Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

The reason had to be the photographs. They hadn’t found them on Father Willy’s person or in his church or residence or anywhere among the people in his village, or on Marten’s person or in his belongings at the hotel, or in those of Marita and her students. As a result they might well have concluded he’d managed to send them to a safe haven off the island, maybe to someone on the mainland using something as simple as the regular mail. The last person they had seen him with had been the foreigner Marten. So why not assume the priest, instead of giving him the pictures to smuggle out, had told him where they were? If that were so they had simply used the old police/military tactic some called “intelligence gain-loss”-why destroy a target when you can exploit it? Meaning it would have been foolish to kill him when it was so much better to let him go and follow him. And they had, putting him on the next plane out of the country and then planting someone on the same plane to tail him. Maybe the jowly man or the man in the golf shirt, or both, or maybe someone else entirely. The problem was-and even in his exhausted state Marten had to smile-they were grasping at straws, because Father Willy had told him nothing.

Once again he glanced over his shoulder. The light over the jowly man’s seat was turned out. Not so for the man in the light blue golf shirt, who was still awake and reading. Forget it, Marten thought. Let them do what they want. You know nothing, so just forget it and go to sleep. He pulled the Air France courtesy blanket up around him and closed his eyes.

You know nothing, he repeated.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

PARIS, CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT.

FRIDAY, JUNE 4. 7:11 A.M.

Marten waited at the luggage carousel with the other passengers from Air France Flight 959. Nearby, he saw Marita standing with her chattering medical students sorting through boarding passes and ticket wallets for luggage receipts. Directly across was the jowly man in the white suit and striped shirt, waiting, like everyone else, for the conveyor to begin. To his right, maybe a dozen passengers down, was the man in tan khakis and blue golf shirt. Both men seemed to be traveling alone. Now he saw Anne Tidrow move toward the carousel. The gray-haired man in the business suit who had been seated next to her in the first class section was with her. Suddenly he wondered if she had deduced the same thing as the army interrogators, that he knew where the photographs were, and was tagging along assuming he would lead her to them. If that were the case, he had not one group but two watching him. And both for no reason at all.

There was a whirring sound, and then the belt on the carousel started up. Seconds later luggage began appearing. Marten turned to look for his bag and found Marita and her students coming toward him. They had already collected theirs and were on their way out.

“Hi and bye.” Marita grinned as she reached him. “We’re on the next flight to Madrid. It leaves in thirty minutes. We barely have time to check our luggage.”

“Then you’d better hurry,” he said, then looked to all of them. “Thank you again for everything you did to help me. Maybe one day we can all-”

“Here,” Marita pressed a page torn from a notebook into his hand. “My address and telephone number if you get to Spain. My e-mail if you don’t.” Her words tailed off shyly, but there was nothing shy about her impish smile. “Please call me if you have time. I want to know what happens to you.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m going home and back to work and grow old, nothing else.”

“You’re not a ‘nothing else’ person, Mr. Marten.” Their eyes met, and the impishness vanished. “I think you’re one of those people trouble follows around.” Once again she smiled. “We have to go. Please call me.”

“I will,” he said and nodded at the others.

Then they were gone, making their way through the rush of early-morning passengers and finally disappearing from sight.

Moments later Marten collected his bag and walked off, pulling the wheeled suitcase behind him. As he did he saw Anne Tidrow and her gray-haired, business-suited companion, their bags on a luggage trolley, moving toward the exit. Never once did she look his way. It made him think that he was wrong about her following him, that she had been on the same flight by coincidence and had no further interest in him whatsoever.

7:30 A.M.

Marten entered Musikfone, a small audio and electronics kiosk, that was up an escalator and down a window-paneled corridor from baggage claim. Outside, he had seen a bright morning sky filled with puffy clouds and the promise of a gathering weather front, but it was what was inside the store that was of far more interest-a display of iPods, Mp3 players, and other electronic gadgets, plus what looked like a thousand headsets, battery chargers, connectors, and attachments. What he wanted was right in front of him-a shelf of inexpensive, throwaway cell phones and, next to them, prepaid phone cards.

His plan was simple: buy a throwaway cell phone, call President Harris on the private number he’d given him, and tell him about the photographs and what he’d witnessed in Bioko, then get rid of the phone, take the next plane to Manchester, and go back to work. If anyone was following him, good luck to them; their life would suddenly become very tedious and wholly uneventful. That is, unless they wanted to learn about flowers and shrubs.

Marten chose a dark blue cell phone and a prepaid phone card and headed toward the cashier. As he did, two things happened at once. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the jowly man in the white suit step into the store, glance around at the merchandise as if he were looking for something, and then leave. The second thing was infinitely more profound and hit like a lightning bolt.

“Fuck!” he spat out loud at the realization just as he reached the cashier, a pert young woman who looked no more than twenty.

“What did you say, sir?” she asked in accented English.

“Nothing. I’m sorry,” he said and set the packaged cell phone on the counter. “Just the phone and the card, please.”

7:38 A.M.

Marten walked down the corridor, throwaway phone and phone card in a plastic Musikfone bag tucked into his wheeled suitcase, barely aware of where he was or the people around him. How could he have been so blind, so naïve?

Father Willy had told him everything as they were descending from the rain forest in the seconds before they heard gunfire and the two boys came running and yelling.

“ I trusted you, Mr. Marten, because I had to,” he’d said. “I could not give you the photographs because there is no way to know who you might run into when we part. Hopefully, you have clear memories of what you have seen and what I have told you. Take that information with you and leave Bioko as quickly as you can. My brother is in Berlin. He is a very capable man. I hope that by the time you reach him neither he nor your American politician friend will have need for you to tell them any of this. Tell them anyway .”

Have need for him to TELL THEM?

Of course not-when his brother would have the photographs right in front of him !

Somehow Father Willy had managed to get them to him, maybe via the regular mail as he’d thought earlier or maybe some other, even simpler, way. If he was right, and he was certain he was, that was where they would be-with Theo Haas in Berlin.

The trouble was, if he could figure it out, how long would it be before Conor White and/or the major and the hawk-faced soldier put things together? How long would it be before they looked into Father Willy’s background and found that despite different last names and lives worlds apart, he and the famed novelist Theo Haas were brothers?